HTC HD2 Comes to Mobile Tech Manor
The FedEx guy rang my bell this morning, and the package he left contained the phone that I have been itching to get my hands on. The HTC HD2 is the Windows Mobile 6.5 packing phone with a ginormous beautiful screen. I’m charging it up now so I can do a good video of the phone in action but meanwhile here are some quick pics. I am amazed at how thin the HD2 is and how comfortable it is in the hand.
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Looks nice and I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.
Does it play nice with AT&T or T-Mobile?
No flash support yet? or has someone ported the Flash version for the Hero for HTC devices?
Please post video, extra long video, web site load times navigation application, Google integration, App store, Battery life, video, Music, camera?
Slight green now :)
it should be tested with 1.48 firmware. it is even faster then.
(writing this on my HD2. loving it so far. feels more like a very small tablet. best browsing and youtube experience on a phone device ever, but i would like to see a webkit browser on this amazing hardware platform…)
Will be waiting for your video review. Also what you think of the screen? Is it bright and is the fonts nice and clear? James you are lucky to be able to get all these nice toys to play with. :) I mean all these devices to reveiw.
Holy crapoley, seeing it next to the iPhone really shows how big that screen is! So what do you think, a little big to shove in your pant pocket or is it ok?
The iPhone is for wimps. Obviously! lol.
I briefly had an original Touch HD and really, there was no comparison in usability with my iPhone. I so wanted to like it, being a WinMo user going way back but build quality was poorer with jerky operation, but the screen was great (apart from not being capacitive).
It could multitask well and download files which almost swayed me a year or so ago, as I do love an open platform, but you’ve got to love a jailbroken iPhone with iFile, Backgrounder and Safari Download Plugin.
This, however, is a different beast and I’m really looking forward to James’s view on it.
Sure, would love to see the N900 go against it :)
Any word yet on what carrier this will be on in the US? I think I heard T-Mobile but I’m hoping that’s not true since Verizon is about the only choice where I live.
I have a Euro HD and Euro HD2. The HD2 is vastly superior and not too big to put in your pocket. Obviously can’t test carrier services here, but it works great when I travel overseas to areas with proper service. The device is fine, the weak link is generally the carrier who owns your pipe.
There are plenty of video reviews from US users. Try Google, LOL.
-MB-
I have had the HD2 for a couple of weeks now, and it´s by far the best windows mobile phone I have owned. But if I had to choose between my 3GS and HD2 it would be an easy choice. The apps and the superior/simple/genius iPhone OS makes it a clear winner in my eyes. Fortunately I don´t have to choose…
You think the iPhone OS is superior? Think again!
I’ve had an iPhone for quite some time before swithing back to WM and the Touch HD.
True, at first sight, everything seems smooth and simple on the iPhone – but after some time, I really got annoyed with the iPhone OS.
Not only doesn’t it let you do basic stuff like connecting it as a storage device, download files from the net etc. but it’s also inferior to Windows Mobile for a couple of other reasons:
The first one is the way it handles notifications. Notifications can pop in quite disturbingly, and the lack of multitasking really limits your possibilities of dealing with them. Windows Mobile, as well as Android and webOS, have well thought out concepts for handling notifications, which is giving you an overview of all the notifications by tapping/sliding the top bar, or directly on the lock screen, making it much more comfortable to deal with them.
As a communications device, the iPhone fails miserably (and I haven’t even mentioned the impact of the limitations for developers and the lack of multitasking, which don’t allow for things like integration with social networks and services, which is really the next big thing as HTC Sense and Palm webOS have shown).
The second reason is the home screen. Yes, it’s simple. But it’s stupid. A confusing bunch of stupid icons. No information whatsoever can be shown on the homescreen or the lock screen (assuming you don’t jailbreak it). Getting to any information like calendar items, tasks, weather and the like usually requres unlocking the device plus at least one, more often up to three clicks. That’s the opposite of productivity.
There are a bunch of other areas where the iPhone OS is inferior, like customization, features, technology (security, enterprise technology, programming…) and there’s really nothing except for the simplicity (which brings lots of problems) of the UI, where it is superior.
Designing a new UI is relatively easy, but catching up with the technologies (and concepts, like the two mentioned above) that Microsoft has with Windows Mobile will be a hard task for Apple.
Unfortunately, Microsoft let them already catch up quite a bit and has not done much to improve WM, but they’re still quite a bit ahead.
About the apps: I’ve not had any problems finding everything that I had for my iPhone for WM. There’s even lots of apps that don’t exist on the iPhone because of Apple’s limitations (like emulators, Google Voice…).
There’s currently about 30,000 apps for WM, compared to 100,000 for the iPhone. But if 80% of the iPhone’s apps are useless (and I’m sure at least 80% are useless) and only 33% of the apps on WM are useless, you get the same amount of useful apps on both platforms.
As a 10 year + WinCE, Pocket PC, WinMo user I hear what you’re saying and agree with much of it. However, the iPhone UI is just so simple and intuitive to use compared to what was always pretty cludgy on WinMo.
I’ve never found the icons confusing, indeed it’s so easy to start what you want and spotlight search is terrific, type in a couple of letters of the app/contact/email you want to find and there it is, ready to stsrt! This is very similar to how I work in Windows 7, I tend to use the search box for most prog and file access as it’s so quick.
What is very frustrating about the iPhone are the artificial limitations that are removed by jailbreaking. I find it so much more productive and many of the Cydia Apps are of a very high quality. I can download files, open them, uncompress files, multitask etc. I just wish I didn’t have to hack the device to do it.
My last device with WinMo was the HTC Advantage which I really enjoyed owning and I’ll certainly consider a WinMo device again in the future but it will be a hard sell. Maybe the HD2 with WinMo 7…